North America

E

Cultural Activity

Cultural life in the United States and Canada is highly developed and diversified, with the mass media (radio, television, films, and newspapers) playing an important role. Almost all North American cities support theatrical organizations and art museums, and musical groups are widespread. Traditional cultural patterns are more evident in the rural areas of Mexico, but its cities have a variety of modern cultural institutions.

IV

Patterns of Economic Development

The economic activities of North America are extraordinarily diverse. The United States and Canada have sophisticated modern economies. Modernization has been uneven in Mexico, with major developments in power, transport, and manufacturing undercut by chronic inflation and a staggering burden of debt.

A

Agriculture

Farming is relatively more important in Mexico than in the other North American countries and provides employment for about 25 per cent of the labour force (compared with some 3 per cent in the United States and 5 per cent in Canada). Subsistence farming is still important throughout Mexico, especially in the south; commercial agriculture is well developed in many areas, however, particularly in the central plateau and in the north. The leading commodities are maize, wheat, and beans, which are raised mostly for domestic consumption, and cotton, cattle, coffee, and sugar, which are produced largely for export.

Agriculture in the United States and Canada is dominated by highly mechanized farms, which produce immense quantities of crops, livestock, and livestock products. The Great Plains of the central United States and the Canadian Prairie provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan) are major world producers of grain (particularly wheat, but also barley, oats, rye, and grain sorghum), oilseeds, and livestock (dairy and beef cattle and sheep). Perhaps the world's finest large farming area is the Corn Belt, that part of the US Middle West from western Ohio to eastern Nebraska, which is the world's largest producer of maize, as well as a major supplier of other grains, soya beans, cattle, and pigs. Farming in California yields a huge amount of high-value irrigated crops, notably fruits and vegetables. Florida and Texas are also great producers of fruits and vegetables, and potatoes are grown in vast quantities in Idaho, Washington State, Oregon, Maine, North Dakota, and south-eastern Canada. Other outstanding agricultural products include cotton, broiler chickens, dairy products, and sugar cane.

B

Forestry and Fishing

Forestry is an important sector of the Canadian economy, especially in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec Province. Notable forest-products industries also flourish in the western United States (particularly in Washington, Oregon, and California) and in the south-eastern United States.

Fishing is the leading economic activity in Greenland but is now a relatively unimportant sector in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, even though the catch is large and some coastal areas are dependent on revenues from sales of finfish and shellfish. Besides the waters near Greenland, major fishing grounds are off the northern Pacific coast, off the northern Atlantic coast, and off the southern Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. In addition, large tuna fleets are based in southern California and western Mexico.

C

Mining

The extraction of minerals is an increasingly important economic activity in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The United States has been one of the world's leading petroleum producers for many years, Canada has been a major producer since the late 1940s, and Mexico became a world leader in oil production in the late 1970s. The United States ranks second among world natural-gas producers and is also a leader in mining coal, produced particularly in the vast Appalachian fields. Iron ore has long been a major product of both the United States and Canada, primarily from deposits around the western end of Lake Superior. More recently, much iron ore has been produced in the Quebec-Labrador border area of eastern Canada. Among the other minerals that have been recovered in quantity in North America are copper, silver, lead, zinc, nickel, sulphur, asbestos, uranium, phosphate rock, and potash.